Hastily assembled "Hotgrave" warbands and apprentice stand-ins (now with battle rep)

[Hobgoblin]

My copy of Frostgrave arrived last weekend - a pleasant surprise, as I'd forgotten that I'd pre-ordered it!

My son and I are going to play an inaugural game tomorrow, so I've been throwing together some warbands from miniatures that we've have to hand. We're very much looking forward to it: we play a lot of SBH/Fightin' Fungi games of a treasure-hunting stripe, so this should be a nice, magic-heavy variation on a theme we like. Given green bases and lightly clad troops, ours will be a rather hotter setting than standard.

One problem has been that while we have a few wizards of various non-human sorts, we don't have any congruent pairs. A thought that occurred to me was that many standard-bearers could just as easily be magical totem-toters. So, the skull-laden standard-bearer below will be the apprentice of the goblin witch (actually an RQ Kyger Litor priestess) in the photo at the bottom of this post.

Another thought was that demonic-looking familiars could easily and plausibly  "count as" apprentices. The idea of a familiar with magical powers of its own works quite nicely. To that end, I'm going to use the devilish red beastman as a the "apprentice" of the orc necromancer in the warband below. I can see any number of lizardmen, slann and the like working well in that regard (in warbands of humans or other utterly different creatures).

Anyway, the warbands for tomorrow will be an orcish one and an amphibian/reptilian one. If time allows, I'll try the orcish one in a couple of variations: with a "familiar" apprentice and with no apprentice but some heavies to supplement a band that geared for ranged combat. The first variation will be necromancer, apprentice, 3 thugs, 3 archers and 1 tracker, while the second will replace the apprentice with the orcish equivalents of a templar and a ranger.

The second will feature a froggy elementalist (and a deranged-looking apprentice - who'll have to do until I finish up some more wizardly slann that are in progress at the moment), a ranger (the snakeman) and four men-at-arms (lizardmen).

The pallid goblins at the bottom may get a look-in too, especially if my wife and daughter can be induced/demand to play ...

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the witch and "apprentice" on their own. I think the standard-bearer makes a passable trainee witch. In any case, it's a fix that will allow us a wider range of warbands!

[fred]

We played our first game last night, and we all used various old skool fantasy minis for our gangs.

And the goblin player went with a standard bearer as one of his wizards.

[ChaosChild]

Skul-on-a-stick. Truly multipurpose! 

[Hobgoblin]

We played our first game last night, and we all used various old skool fantasy minis for our gangs.

And the goblin player went with a standard bearer as one of his wizards.

Yes, it seems a very natural fix. I've got a few distinctive warbands (red Lund orcs; Chronicle hobgoblins; Chronicle kobolds) on the go for SBH where there is one obvious shaman or wizard, but no deputy. So a standard-bearer seems a nice stand-in - and I'm all for getting standard-bearers on the table wherever possible.

ChaosChild - absolutely!

We played our first game today. It was a blast. It was also an overwhelming victory to the apprentice-less orcs. Firepower won out over magic quite convincingly. The cold-blooded contingent had but one survivor - a lizardman (man-at-arms) who carried treasure off the table early on. The wizard, apprentice, ranger and the other three men-at-arms were all put to the orcish sword (and arrow).

The big problem for the frog wizard was that he got cornered behind a rock by three archers; he could shield himself from two of them but not the third and was too busy with offensive spells to consider his own safety. Arrows and miscastings whittled down his health points, and then both an orc champion (templar) and an archer closed in to finish him off. The despairing dumping of treasure by a lizardman to join the fray almost saved him, but not quite. A grenade spell by the apprentice avenged his death somewhat, killing the archer and wounding the champion, but other archers swiftly turned the apprentice, who was already depleted by miscasts, into a pin cushion.

Having only one archer (a ranger snakeman) hindered the cold-bloods a lot, as did their lack of cheap and cheerful infantry. One of the lizardmen (men-at-arms) scaled an improbable tower to get some treasure, but was bone-darted by the orcish necromancer as he descended. A larger number of thugs would probably have served them a lot better; the orcish thugs were able to nip in and grab treasure while their archers whittled down the enemy. I've just noticed, too, that I wrongly costed the men-at-arms at 50gc each, so the cold-blooded warband was actually about 120gc over budget. That didn't help.

All in all, I thought that going for conventional firepower rather than an apprentice paid off. I suspect two marksmen or four archers are a match for an apprentice, at low levels at least. For ranged attacks, the apprentice generally has to make a high roll to cast and then needs another high opposed roll to do significant damage. The archer just needs to get lucky once ...

As for the ruleset, we really liked it and will certainly play it again. My son was very keen to roll for his one item of treasure, and we'll see if any of the rest of his defeated warband actually survived.

Our usual ruleset is SBH/Fightin' Fungi. A few points of comparison sprung to mind (none are criticisms of either system, just differences):

1. The lack of morale effects in Frostgrave makes for a very different game. When my son's wizard was killed, he immediately asked "what about the morale test?".
2. The risk/reward in Frostgrave is very much in the magic rather than command/control (high numbers of actions vs risk of turnover).
3. Combat is less spectacular in Frostgrave (no knockdowns/gruesome kills/tramples, etc), but again, the magic is in the magic.
4. Missile fire seems much deadlier in Frostgrave than in SBH. In the latter, you can be reasonably confident of getting most of your heavily infantry close to enemy lines in the face of missile fire. Not so in Frostgrave. The D20 is a great equaliser.
5. It seems that the only way to leave combat is to win a round and push yourself back. One thing I did miss from SBH was the option of high-risk flight. When my son's wizard was caught by the "templar", his instinct and mine was to retreat rapidly and risk a free hack. But that isn't an option.

A question that arose from point 5: what happens if you're in close combat with two or more opponents and you win an attack against one of them? Can you opt to push yourself back 1" and escape from all your foes? Or does the presence of an undefeated foe rule that out?

Anyway, here are some (bad) photos of a rainy afternoon's action. The scenics are second to none in their crudeness!

[JamWarrior]

In the increasingly rambling FAQ and errata thread, Joe has confirmed that if you are in combat with multiple opponents, when you win against one you can elect to push them back but not yourself.

[Hobgoblin]

In the increasingly rambling FAQ and errata thread, Joe has confirmed that if you are in combat with multiple opponents, when you win against one you can elect to push them back but not yourself.

Thanks! That's good to know.